Month: June 2016

And no, he didn’t come. He dropped me off. He is so low that you can feel the negative energy coming off him, it’s a physical sensation.

What the hell do you do with a husband who is having suicidal thoughts? He rang the out of hours people who said to speak to his CBT therapist on Monday. But he’ll have to go to GP, who’ll give him pills, refer him to the local mental health team who’ll want to give him more pills and see him in a month.

And so far nothing has helped, apart from him not drinking.

I really don’t know what will help. I worry because what happens if nothing does help? He can’t live like this. I think suicide is a morally reprehensible thing but I can see that he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life like this.

The journalist and author Sally Brampton died a few weeks ago, took her own life, she’d been depressed for years and years, and wrote the book Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression. The quote from her that sticks out is this one: ‘Killing oneself is, anyway, a misnomer. We don’t kill ourselves. We are simply defeated by the long, hard struggle to stay alive.’

I’m not the one with depression, but this quote seems to sum it up. It makes me so sad. I can’t help my husband, I can’t stop him feeling like he wants to die and that is so painful, for me yes of course. But to think that even thoughts of leaving behind his kids and the shitstorm his death would create – not even that can help. That’s how bad he feels. And so although I can’t feel his anguish, I can understand how bad things must be for him to even think about leaving his beloved children.

Yes, you guessed it. DH is quiet, grumpy, and naturally doesn’t want to go out. I’m keeping quiet, being pleasant. Which is hard because I want to shout about how bloody unfair and annoying it is that instead of enjoying having time on our own, we’re not. I’m doing my thing (reading, cleaning) and he’s doing his (watching TV).

We just do not get any quality time at all because if the kids are away, he seems to be in a bad mood/depressed/whatever.

All those four-day weeks he worked, how many times did we go out together and do something? Twice, in about eight months.

He just will not, or cannot, make the effort for us. Not for me, for us, not when it comes to us doing something like go out.